Cloud Nine (Jin Mao Part One)

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My roommate had told me that there was a place in Shanghai called Cloud Nine that was the highest bar in the world.  He seemed like he was pretty excited about going – he goes out to bars a couple times in every port – and I didn’t really care at all.  A bar that’s high up.  Who cares, you know?

 

Anyway, the group of three and myself had absolutely no plans, and we were near the Jin-Mao Tower, so we decided we should go up.  While we were on the way, Eric noticed that the building right next to it was even taller.  It’s the one shaped like a basket, that kind of looks like it has a handle at the top where you could pick it up if you were tall enough.  We walked into the bottom of the building and asked where the observation deck was, and the pointed us left.  We thought they were pointing to Jin-Mao, so we stopped in the next door and asked again.  They again pointed us left.  So we went out and we went left.

 

We finally came to a security check-point which was the entrance to the deck.  They called it the Sky Walk.  As it turns out, it’s not the top floor you get to see, but the floor that’s on the bottom of the “handle” of the building.  It’s made of glass, and you can walk across it, and right through your feet you can see Shanghai 900 feet below you.  It’s pretty freaky.  We didn’t actually do it, though we know some kids who did.  It cost something like $15 US and we didn’t feel up to that.  We though Jin-Mao might be free, so we headed there.

 

We tried to go up in the JM tower as much as we could on our own.  We finally made it to like the 54^th floor or the 84^th floor or something like that, and we asked how to get all the way up to the observation deck.  They told us we had to go down to B1, and the entrance was down there.  I think we had actually gotten to the bar at the top by that point, and we found out there was a one-drink minimum (about $10 US), and we decided to try the observation deck, and to hope it was free.

 

It wasn’t free.  And the line was long.  So we went to the bar instead.

 

It turned that the bar was Cloud Nine.  Weird.  I had absolutely no plans to go there, and there I was.  It was really beautifully decorated with black and red everywhere, candles on the tables, and a great view out the windows.  They had chocolate gold coins on the desk where we had to ask for a table.  I took some, and then we took pictures in the waiting area, which was clearly designed to allow you the widest view possible for photographing.

 

We finally got a table and looked through the menu.  We also tried the nuts, which were extremely spicy (but free).  I don’t think any of us got anything to drink.  I think Catie and Dani both got ice cream/parfait, and I just got some scoops of ice cream.  Eric might have gotten a drink, but I’m not really sure.

 

Anyway, the view was amazing.  We had a window seat, and just had an awesome full view of Shanghai early in the night when the buildings were just lighting up.  We could even see some of them turn their show lights on.  It was seriously classy, too.  The tables were well-separated, and there was no real bar area for people to get drunk and rowdy.  You had to wait for your waitress to come for a drink.  The music was also really, really nice – acoustic English and American stuff.  I would have liked to have asked for the soundtrack, but it probably wasn’t really a workable agreement.  We sat and talked for a good while, until Eric needed to leave, then paid $10 US and headed out.  We all really liked the place.  It was just nice to sit and talk and look and know that – even if drunk SASers showed up – they couldn’t ruin our having a good time because the place just seriously wouldn’t allow that.